To think of you really want to be financially independent you shouldn’t get married

[LovelyYellowLabrador]

Been eating dirty John on Netflix and reading comments afterwards
Mainly along the lines of she should have remained independent
But surely if your married your not financially independent
I mean if your dh racks up loads of debt he’s going to take you down too ?

Many men think the same. Hence the many posts from women on here complaining that the father of their children, someone they’ve live for a long time will not commit to marriage. Personally I think women gain from marriage more than they lose. I know it’s not quiet an equivalence but it’s more important that women stay self sufficient and independent after children, rather then relying on a partner.

My view is that if one partner in the relationship is going to have to be financially dependant on the other to facilitate childcare/the advancement of the other persons career then marriage/civil partnership is absolutely necessary to offer the dependent person some level of security.

If neither party will be financially dependent on the other then marriage is just a matter of preference.

And I say that as the main earner. In my relationship I earn 4 times what my DH does, if we were to split it would be me paying maintenance/sharing my assets in the divorce, DH would have nothing to split.

Well say you have two people both work full time, no children but the dh has a drug habit or gambling addict or shopping addict and runs up thousands in debt he’s going to take her down too surely ? So even in these circumstance no kids both working full time you are not financially independent if your married ??
Or have I got it wrong ?

Not necessarily, if the debt is solely in one partners name and can be proven to have not been incurred for the benefit of the family then it can be taken off of the split of assets so it's not shared, it would depend on how the debt was incurred and what proof exists.

There's definitely an argument for a childfree couple who both work and maintain separate finances remaining unmarried, but there are arguments for marriage in that situation too:

• so that the other partner is next of kin in the event of illness
• for inheritance purposes in the event of death and the transfer of any shared assets like property
• just because they want to have that legally recognised relationship

There's no such thing as financial independence while children are young. None. It is a fiction. The law is set up to protect the vulnerable party: the one who bears children.

It's fine to be independent if you don't have kids or dont anticipate kids. If you do, you're a mug thinking you're independent from their father.

Interdependence and team work is a thing.

DH and I earned about the same when we met.

I developed a chronic illness and no longer work. But I do my best to support him with things like cooking, organising our lives. He does the lion’s hate of the cleaning though.

Now he earns nearly eight times the amount he did when we met. He is very open about the fact he couldn’t do that without my support. He’s also very open about how much motivation he gets from the fact he sees it as his job to protect me financially as I am unable to work.

Now we are in a financial position in our mid forties that, even if we split up, we’d both be ok for life.

You can with trust and team work end up in a place you could never have ended up alone, even with challenging circumstances (in my case a decade of illness).

I once saw a contemporary dance piece that demonstrates that very clearly. It focussed on moves where the two dancers supported one another. It wasn’t about traditional lifts where the larger/stronger person lifted the smaller one. It was about balances and moving against one another in a supporting way. Each dancer was both supporter and supported, and in some movements/positions they were both supporting and supported at the same time.

If we’d both been pursuing our careers in the way we did when we met, we’d both progressed, but I doubt we’d be earning combined what DH earns himself.

Elizabeth Warren wrote a book called the Two Income Trap which looks at the pressures people feel in the modern world with stagnant wages and rising costs. Basically in the face of that it’s better to have one person who earns the family a lot of money and one person who saves the family a lot of money. It doesn’t have to be along traditional lines.

Given how hostile and competitive the world can be financially, especially at the moment, I think being part of a team makes a good life and financial independence more achievable, not less. As a society we’ve gone a bit too far down the road of individualist thinking. Life is easier and better when it’s not a case of everyone for themselves.

@TheMeditativeRose

Interdependence and team work is a thing.

DH and I earned about the same when we met.

I developed a chronic illness and no longer work. But I do my best to support him with things like cooking, organising our lives. He does the lion’s hate of the cleaning though.

Now he earns nearly eight times the amount he did when we met. He is very open about the fact he couldn’t do that without my support. He’s also very open about how much motivation he gets from the fact he sees it as his job to protect me financially as I am unable to work.

Now we are in a financial position in our mid forties that, even if we split up, we’d both be ok for life.

You can with trust and team work end up in a place you could never have ended up alone, even with challenging circumstances (in my case a decade of illness).

I once saw a contemporary dance piece that demonstrates that very clearly. It focussed on moves where the two dancers supported one another. It wasn’t about traditional lifts where the larger/stronger person lifted the smaller one. It was about balances and moving against one another in a supporting way. Each dancer was both supporter and supported, and in some movements/positions they were both supporting and supported at the same time.

If we’d both been pursuing our careers in the way we did when we met, we’d both progressed, but I doubt we’d be earning combined what DH earns himself.

Elizabeth Warren wrote a book called the Two Income Trap which looks at the pressures people feel in the modern world with stagnant wages and rising costs. Basically in the face of that it’s better to have one person who earns the family a lot of money and one person who saves the family a lot of money. It doesn’t have to be along traditional lines.

Given how hostile and competitive the world can be financially, especially at the moment, I think being part of a team makes a good life and financial independence more achievable, not less. As a society we’ve gone a bit too far down the road of individualist thinking. Life is easier and better when it’s not a case of everyone for themselves.

This is such a brilliant comment.

Basically yes. Marriage only benefits the dependent partner (financially, I mean).

From a purely financial perspective if you have your own money its very risky getting married (which is why so many men are reluctant). It might make sense to pool resources for a house etc but its not worth the risk of getting into a situation where all your assets can be split down the middle and you could be on the hook for their debts.

If you're planning to be at home its an entirely different ballgame of course and then you'd be silly not to. But if you work and have assets its daft getting married.

If we’d both been pursuing our careers in the way we did when we met, we’d both progressed, but I doubt we’d be earning combined what DH earns himself.

I disagree. It may have worked for you but it does not apply universally. Let's just say you were lucky to marry a superstar. If he was not skilled or hardworking or motivated to protect his dependent wife or just lucky enough to be successful, you could have been looking at a deprived existence.

The couples who solely rely on one super high earning partner come with its own challenges which you have glossed over. Not to mention the risk of a sole breadwinner.

Count your lucky stars.

Very interesting reflections @TheMeditativeRose.

I do think that, if you have one person whose career has huge earning potential, their path to success is much easier if they are free to pursue it if they have a partner who doesn’t work and manages their lives. In that case, of course marriage protects the person who sacrifices their earning potential.

In our household my DH is great and he does more than his far share. He earns well but I earn more than double even being part time. I’m grateful for his support but I’d have gotten much further in my career if he’d done it all whilst I worked! Many of my male colleagues have a wife who does just that, whilst I still have to pull my weight domestically. There’s no way that my DH would sacrifice his career, earning potential and years of training to do that though - whereas many women do this without question.

Independence cant
Be achieved if you are tied
Down to someone else

I’m not English. In most countries, when you marry, what you had before is yours forever more and what you earn after you marry becomes shared property.

In England there is no such thing as a legally binding prenup. In most other places, if you chose to continue to keep things separate later it’s a form you fill In for cheap that holds up.

This doesn’t then remove the obligation for the wealthier parent to help maintain the standards that the children were used to within marriage. But it means you are not responsible for the debts - and this is a big one - your partner may have had before or accrued after you married.

I see the advantage of the no prenup if you are confident your partner will be a responsible higher earner, especially as in the UK childcare and job flexibility are appalling for women, but to me it’s a big risk.

I own a house but don’t earn much. My partner earns more but has no assets.

I will never marry in the UK or share a bank account for any other purpose than minimal expenses.

Yes, pensions and tax rebates come into it. The problem is that if you don’t have a job where you earn enough cash to be able to pay a lawyer for advice, but your partner does, you can’t afford to have to fight for your money or rights.

The UK is the most generous in divorce, in theory, but if your husband hides his assets or puts you in debt, it’s the worst. It’s a gamble. I prefer to play it safe.

At the very least, have six months living expenses and six months of whatever your husband can afford in lawyers fees.

I love my partner and I and everyone believes him to be the loveliest man that ever lived. But he may become self employed and lose all the money. He may fall in love with someone.

We will always split the actual cash money and take the long time financial decisions together, but I will never put our names on the same piece of paper.

I got married owning the house we lived in in my sole name, my parents helped fund renovations like rewiring, tiling, carpets etc. Either I or my parents paid for the majority of furnishings my husband came with some crappy flat pack furniture but that was it. We both had separate bank accounts, I paid for the mortgage & everything else to do with the home, he was supposed to give me part of his wage to pay his share but more often than not he paid me short or borrowed from me because he had blown his wages in. We were earning roughly the same, we had £40k coming in between us & on paper were comfortably off, the mortgage was less than £300 a month & we could manage. By the 1time we split up exh was no longer working, he was on sickness benefits, within 2 days he had put a marital charge on my house & when he finally did move out he claimed everything I had paid for in the house, he also left the house with no heating on it was the winter of 2010, I was recovering from 2 operations in the space of a month when I found out the house was flooded, all the pipes & the boiler had burst, every ceiling was down & the house was unmortgageable so I couldn't sell it, he signed it straight back to me & I found out he hadn't paid the insurance so I couldn't claim. It cost nearly £5k that I had to borrow from my parents to get it sorted. I would never marry again, in future what is mine is staying mine.

I've not seen the programme you are referring to but your comments remind me that the actress Amanda Abington had something like £100k debt. At the time she was in a LTR with the actor Martin Freeman. I'm sure if they were married, her debtors would have come after HIS £££.

I am the higher earner, by double. I solely own the house we live in and pay the mortgage myself, I get a contribution of half the utility bills and alternate weeks food shop.

There is absolutely no appeal or benefit to me as a woman to get married in this scenario. And the more I hear people bleating on about the sanctity of marriage and vows and working at it and not giving up and all of that stuff, the more I think they’re trying to convince themselves.

@TheMeditativeRose

Interdependence and team work is a thing.

DH and I earned about the same when we met.

I developed a chronic illness and no longer work. But I do my best to support him with things like cooking, organising our lives. He does the lion’s hate of the cleaning though.

Now he earns nearly eight times the amount he did when we met. He is very open about the fact he couldn’t do that without my support. He’s also very open about how much motivation he gets from the fact he sees it as his job to protect me financially as I am unable to work.

Now we are in a financial position in our mid forties that, even if we split up, we’d both be ok for life.

You can with trust and team work end up in a place you could never have ended up alone, even with challenging circumstances (in my case a decade of illness).

I once saw a contemporary dance piece that demonstrates that very clearly. It focussed on moves where the two dancers supported one another. It wasn’t about traditional lifts where the larger/stronger person lifted the smaller one. It was about balances and moving against one another in a supporting way. Each dancer was both supporter and supported, and in some movements/positions they were both supporting and supported at the same time.

If we’d both been pursuing our careers in the way we did when we met, we’d both progressed, but I doubt we’d be earning combined what DH earns himself.

Elizabeth Warren wrote a book called the Two Income Trap which looks at the pressures people feel in the modern world with stagnant wages and rising costs. Basically in the face of that it’s better to have one person who earns the family a lot of money and one person who saves the family a lot of money. It doesn’t have to be along traditional lines.

Given how hostile and competitive the world can be financially, especially at the moment, I think being part of a team makes a good life and financial independence more achievable, not less. As a society we’ve gone a bit too far down the road of individualist thinking. Life is easier and better when it’s not a case of everyone for themselves.

I love this response

I never understand people who get married and then complain they have to give away their money when they divorce. That's the point of marriage. And is why I would never do it.

@LovelyYellowLabrador

Well say you have two people both work full time, no children but the dh has a drug habit or gambling addict or shopping addict and runs up thousands in debt he’s going to take her down too surely ? So even in these circumstance no kids both working full time you are not financially independent if your married ?? Or have I got it wrong ?

Well I am not liable for my OH’s personal debts regardless of whether we are married. As it happens we are not married but do live together as a household - we have separate finances but obviously both contribute to the house etc. So if one of us developed a bad gambling habit say that would obviously have a big impact on our overall financial position because the other would have to compensate for the others inability to contribute. But I honestly don’t see how it makes any difference if we are married or not (speaking as a lawyer with quite a bit of experience Re bankruptcy etc)

Basically in the face of that it’s better to have one person who earns the family a lot of money and one person who saves the family a lot of money.

That's a bit of a an over-generalisation.

@Avarua

There's no such thing as financial independence while children are young. None. It is a fiction. The law is set up to protect the vulnerable party: the one who bears children.

It's fine to be independent if you don't have kids or dont anticipate kids. If you do, you're a mug thinking you're independent from their father.

Lots of parents are financially independent, especiallg single parents. Being a parent hasn’t had a negative impact on my financial independence, as a single parent I was able to gain promotion and further improve my finances.

Now I’m married we’re both financially independent, we earn a similar amount, we have a similar amount in savings, our properties are set up so that in the case of divorce we both have somewhere to live, or we both have a property to sell and buy elsewhere or they are both sold and the proceeds are split 50:50 again so we can each buy elsewhere.

My partner and I are women and we are getting married later this year. I am the higher earner, and she is retraining for a career change. I own the family home, she helps with childcare and general house management (dc are from my past relationship). Although she has assets from a house sale, she is much more vulnerable than me, and taking a huge long term risk by being out of work for the few years it will take to retrain. We are getting married to help mitigate that risk and ensure we are each other's next of kin. I see cohabitation as the riskier proposition compared to marriage, in our scenario.

When my DH asked me to marry him I didn’t even consider future finances, it simply wasn’t on my radar. At that point I was living in his house and paying him ‘rent’ every month and then we’d share all costs. I had never considered this to be wrong, it was just the situation we were in. We pretty much earned the same.

After marriage we joined all our finances as the plan was to TTC straight away. After the first baby I went back to work full time so my income wasn’t affected at all.

After our second son though I went part time so my wage obviously dropped and I could only afford to do that as my husband had had a promotion about 6 months prior which enabled me to reduce my hours.

Whilst being part time I’m pretty sure I was looked over when it came to promotions in my workplace yet my husband received another promotion and he now brings over £1’200 home more a month than I do. It’s not an issue at all. He didn’t get his promotion because I was part time, he would have got the promotion irregardless of how many hours I worked. He would still have got his promotion if I worked full time so I certainly don’t have the attitude of “me being at home enabled my husband to advance in his career” which I see being said on MN a lot. My working hours had no bearing on him going up his career ladder.

Our youngest son starts school this September so I’ve now been looking at my career again and I’m in a more specialised role and in the next few months I will progress within this role to a level which will increase my salary quite a lot. I will still be part time though and although my take home pay will be much higher, my DH will still be bringing home more than me.

Money and income disparities have never been an issue in our marriage we just pull together and live our life in the way that suits us best.

Maybe that’s a naive approach, I don’t know. But over the last 6 years where my DH’s wage was the one to fund our way of life I never felt vulnerable by it.

However, I can understand the reservations about women who give up their jobs to stay at home with their children because that’s a big risk to take because then you really are dependent on the man. I’m sure a lot of men don’t want to get married for fear of this situation and how much they’d be screwed if the relationship failed and she’d be entitled to 50%.

I’m not saying that’s right, but I imagine it’s a very common view and I think high earning women also don’t get married for this reason.

@Avarua

There's no such thing as financial independence while children are young. None. It is a fiction. The law is set up to protect the vulnerable party: the one who bears children.

It's fine to be independent if you don't have kids or dont anticipate kids. If you do, you're a mug thinking you're independent from their father.

Not if you earn enough to look after yourself and your children, regardless of the father?

That is what is meant by independence surely? Of course there are interlinks between people - but if you have the savings and/or earnings that you need, without input from the father, then you are financially independent.

I am financially independent in that I have my own financial history, credit rating and earning potential. If I had to start again I am very employable and could comfortably provide for myself and DD.

However my marriage is a partnership so no, my finances are not solely mine but shared with DH and vice versa. I say this as the only earner.

I do shudder when I see women on here and in real life happily throwing away their earning potential and independence. Life is unpredictable and the ability to be independent is a precious thing. Depending entirely on another person is a very vulnerable place to be.

However if you are going to give up your earning power in order to raise kids then being married is essential to give you some protection.